ar, "that we are not to make an assault, after all. There's
enough rebels over there in the works to eat us up without salt. We are
ordered to only make a demonstration, and hold them, while the rest work
down on their flanks toward Calhoun, which is six miles below, and get
in their rear. You can let your men rest in place till further orders."

"Take the company Orderly," said the Captain, walking off with the
Adjutant.

"'Tention! Stack arms; Place rest!" commanded the Orderly.

The revulsion of feeling among the keenly-wrought-up men was almost
painful.

"Demonstration be blamed," said Si, sinking upon a convenient rock. "I
always did hate foolin'. Gracious, how tired I am."

"Only a demonstration--only powow, noise, show and bluff," sneered
Shorty, flinging his gun against the stack. "Why didn't they tell us
this an hour ago, and save me all this wear and tear that's makin' me
old before my time? When I git ready for a fight I want it to come off,
without any postponement on account of weather. Come, Pete, go wash your
face and hands, and then we'll spread our blankets and lay down. I'm
tireder'n a mule after crossin' Rocky Face Ridge. I don't want to take
another step, nor even think, till I git a good sleep."

"We don't have to go over that brush, then?" said Alf Russell, with an
expression of deep relief. "I'm so glad. Great Jerusalem, how my wound
begins to ache again. You fellows oughtn't to laugh at my wound. You
don't know how it hurts to have all those delicate nerves torn up."

So it was with every one. The moment the excitement of the impending
fight passed away, every one was sinking with fatigue, and all his other
troubles came back. Monty Scruggs suddenly remembered how badly he had
been hurt, and started to drag himself off in search of the Surgeon,
while Harry Joslyn and Sandy Baker, chumming together for the first
time, snuggled together in their blankets, and sought that relief from
the excitement and fatigues of the day which kindly Nature never refuses
to healthy young bodies.

CHAPTER XIX. SI AND SHORTY ARE PUT UNDER ARREST.

THE next morning the rebels were found to be gone from the position
in front of the 200th Ind;, and after breakfast the regiment marched
leisurely by a road around the dreaded abatis, to the ground which had
been scarred and mangled by our terrible artillery fire.

It was an appalling scene that the eyes of the boys rested upon. Every
horrid form of mutilatio